


Bread and Roses

by likethemaryellencarter



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Activism, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, because we all know they'd be anarchists, they're a modern day affinity group
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-09
Updated: 2013-06-09
Packaged: 2017-12-14 09:45:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/835522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likethemaryellencarter/pseuds/likethemaryellencarter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Before an action, everyone was keyed up, running on their own excitement and hope and idealism, combined with the heady intoxication of being one of a group wanting the same and propping each other up with structures of shared ideology. Once the action began, though, and every break in action was a strangled gasp for breath from air polluted with CS gas, people became ragged, and suddenly the man who before had been the bitterest of rivals (because we can't do what the socialists are doing, we're anarcho-syndicalists) became a brother-in-arms against the police, a friendly face any not hidden behind a riot mask."</p><p>From about 1998 to roughly 2003, the American leftist movement focused its attention on trade summits, inspired by, among others, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, and the plight of countries heavily in debt to the IMF and imperialist Western powers. The attacks on the United States in September 2001 broke the left wing fairly irreparably with regards to these protests.</p><p>But it was fun while it lasted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bread and Roses

The most essential thing, Enjolras thought as he hung over the bannister and intermittently watched the crowd below and the swirling of his cigarette's smoke, was that the people were out, and out in force. He had had a nasty encounter with a local, who had blamed him-- him!-- for the tear gas smothering the neighborhood, a few hours ago, sure, and several pacifist groups had already posted press releases on their websites denouncing those who "brought stick and stones to the tables of democracy," tables which, then, must have been inside a Starbucks. He felt vaguely guilty about disrupting the work of the baristas at the fifteen corporate coffee shops across Montréal which had and were having their windows broken and spray painted, because those men and women were just as screwed over by globalization and capitalism as the members of the Black Bloc hurling the bricks were, if not more so, but he had rationalized to Combeferre a few caffeine-fueled nights ago that "they would still get paid, and we do warn as many locals to get out as we can. It's symbolic, Combeferre, we're not trying to hurt anyone who doesn't own their own letterhead, property damage is not violence." That had been, as he recalled, fifteen minutes before he had been forced by Combeferre and a bleary-eyed Feuilly (rolling over on the futon to glare at the two men and to bite out a "You do realize that we have roughly three hours before we have to get our asses down to the spokescouncil that you fucking ordered, yes?") to get some sleep.

The adrenaline had been different then. Enjolras was now fueling himself on greasy vegan hash and nicotine, much like Combeferre was never seen without a mug of coffee and Courfeyrac couldn't go for an hour without finding something with sugar in it. Before an action, everyone was keyed up, running on their own excitement and hope and idealism, combined with the heady intoxication of being one of a group wanting the same and propping each other up with structures of shared ideology. Once the action began, though, and every break in action was a strangled gasp for breath from air polluted with CS gas, people became ragged, and suddenly the man who before had been the bitterest of rivals (because we can't do what the socialists are doing, we're anarcho-syndicalists) became a brother-in-arms against the police, a friendly face any not hidden behind a riot mask.

They all relied on him, was the problem, and the reason he was huddled on a small balcony while fires were burning on the street below him. Enjolras trusted himself, of course. He knew what he was talking about, he could argue ideology with the best of them, some of the most vital strategies being played out in the city around him had emerged from his own mind. He was able to lead, able to be the first to charge a police blockade, and the first to withhold an unruly and unthinking mob that wanted to charge a blockade, able to calm down a crowd blinded by pepper spray, able to distract pacifists long enough to get on with things. Oh, he was good at what he was doing. But he was twisted onto a steel balcony and losing all feeling in his legs because he had been good at what he had been doing for two days straight, sans sleep of more than three hours at a time, a cigarette unstolen by Bahorel (who would waltz in, bloody, with a gas-mask hanging around his neck, report gleefully the number of cops beaten away, steal Enjolras' cigarette, and sweep out again to lob more Molotovs, or whatever Bahorel did when in Red Blocs) or, most importantly, a silent moment to sit himself down and assemble the scattered darting of groups he had seen in his periphery into some kind of cohesive narrative.

The window creaked behind him, and Enjolras turned himself around quickly, stretching out long legs. Jehan Prouvaire crawled out and handed him a sheet over paper, the back of which was covered in Combeferre's handwriting (phone numbers, a name with “Socialists????” next to it), and the top with Bahorel's scrawled FUCK LIBERALS and Feuilly's tighter “No.”

Enjolras skimmed it, and grinned and grimaced in equal measure. "While I'm pleased that the action at the president's hotel was so successful..."

"It would be pleasant if the press could report it in a way that told people what happened? With real numbers and a modicum of journalist integrity?" Jehan finished with a grin. Jehan was the effective coordinator of the Indy Media Center, and the majority of his time not spent with some kind of guerilla botanist group that all les Amis had silently agreed to not look to closely at or scaling trees to hurl smokebombs at the cops was spent sending press releases and updating websites to force some kind of truth out into the world.

“I find it very difficult to understand how the people can know that the overwhelming majority of mainstream media outlets-- Fox, yes, of course, but all of them, you know? Like even the purportedly left-wing ones-- are controlled by moneyed interests, and that if those media are reporting on things explicitly designed to smash those interests, the reporting is clearly not going to be anything more than surface and one-sided,” Enjolras said, tying his hair back to climb back inside. He hoisted open the window and folded himself back inside, putting out a hand for Jehan, who was, as Bahorel occasionally had to remind people with a raised hand and a “he can fight his own battles,” as strong and vicious as anyone on the streets, but still short enough to worry Enjolras about the jump down from the window to the floor, despite having once spent an entire summer on a tree-sit with the man. 

Enjolras was a nervous mother hen about the entire affinity group, basically, and when Grantaire had pointed this out with a whispered smirk the last time they had seen each other-- which was, fuck, ten hours ago? Was R with Combeferre?-- Enjolras had just had to shrug his hands up to heavens. He had better things to do than lose his best friends to police batons, and damned if he was going to let them forget it, even if he wasn't the type for Courfeyrac's huddled and hugged “We're all in this together, team,” speeches.

Jehan worried his bottom lip between his teeth, and tossed Enjolras his gas mask, as Jehan slipped his own over his neck. “I mean, of course I agree with you, but that's the essential part of groups like ours, yes? By ours I mean Indy Media. I don't think it's willful ignorance on the part of the public, and,” he smiled and anticipated the words Enjolras was forming, “I know you don't think that either. I think that it's easy to have that cognitive dissonance, because capitalism forces the public to accept the words shoved down their throats. Hierarchical media structures force people to look at entertainment, which includes the news!, as something separate from their own lives, because you're constantly looking up for information. The ability to be a member of both the events occurring and the team reporting said events is very powerful.” Jehan was shrugging on a pink floral thing which protected him while he was in green zones from gas, and so Enjolras was willing to let it go. Enjolras shrugged on his black sweater-- gifted to him by a long-gone woman from a similarly long-gone collective, who had passed it on with a winked “You'll look better in it than I,” to which Enjolras had responded with a blush and silent promise to never take it off. 

“I think you're right, to a certain extent, but there's something to be said for willful ignorance. It's so much more pleasing to look at a force of unruly kids and pin the name of villains on them, as opposed to on the 'keepers of the peace, protectors of the populace, guardians of justice, democracy's...” Enjolras paused at Jehan's smirk. “I may have gotten punched by a cop today. But regardless, people have a tendency to want to look for the good in authority figures. Which I understand, of course, as you do yourself, and as the majority of us do, but the difference between believing that authority is looking out for your best interests, and believing that people are essentially good, is that you can't ascribe human morality to conglomerates when those groups aren't controlled by real democracy. The, and I hesitate to use the word, but the 'mainstream media' isn't looking out for us because they're profit-driven.”

“I swear to fucking god,” Bahorel came staggering up the steps, tugging behind him a bruised and grinning Feuilly, “I am going to try to get myself arrested so that I don't have to hear your pretentious shit.”

“You called a socialist a 'Trotsky-sprouting supporter of a hierarchical hive-mind whose tacit approval of State violence will only get himself an autonomist fist to the face' literally five minutes ago.” Feuilly sponged his own face off with the limp and bedraggled bandana that had been attempting valiantly to hide his bright red hair. “Enjolras, you should probably head out there. I have to be over with the Palestinian Coalition right outside the hotel in about a half an hour, but I think there's a pretty fucking big action going on down at the main park. They're going to need you.” 

“I’m going to need to talk to you about that Palestinian—but yeah, park, is Combeferre there?” asked Enjolras, who hadn’t seen the man in a few hours, and was frankly starting to get kind of jittery. It wasn’t right to be separated from his best friend -- a sentiment to which Bahorel and Feuilly were a living testament, managing to locate each other in the middle of riots and became this quadruple-fisted _thing_. 

“I think so,” Feuilly said, rummaging around in a disconcertingly oversized rucksack which câlice was most definitely Bahorel’s were they sharing luggage now to find a keffiyeh. “I just ran into Joly who was toting an enormous medic bag, he said that Combeferre was going to be with him at the park because there were rumors of gas, and that Grantaire’s with Courfeyrac at some kind of secret thing no one is allowed to talk about but is apparently reconnaissance or something.”

Bahorel pouted. “I still don’t know why they didn’t invite me.”

“Because at the time, you were lobbing smoke bombs at cops and looked _kinda into it_ and not to be distracted.”

Jehan was bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet, and staring longingly out the door, to go back into the swirling mobs of the summit protests, where, and here Enjolras could only assume, his cohorts were secretly meeting to take down capitalism, the patriarchy, and color-coördination, with Venus flytraps. 

“Okay, alright, we’re off,” Enjolras said, as Jehan slunk closer and closer to the door. “Just… don’t leave the apartment in shambles, okay? And for the love of Christ, check in with someone in a couple of hours. Affinity groups!” Enjolras shouted, as the door closed.

**Author's Note:**

> SO SOME NOTES:
> 
> Les Amis de l'ABC are an affinity group based in New York City, but the majority of them are from Quebecois families, whence come their names, which I refuse to Anglicize for pretentious francophone reasons.
> 
> I find it very important, when updating and transposing Les Amis, to make sure to reflect current racial, socioeconomic, and sexual diversities in the activist communities. So the idea that every dude in here is straight, white, vaguely Christian, and upper-middle-class is _laughable_.
> 
> I really only have a super-defined headcanon about one of the characters when it comes to race, but everyone's favorite mille-feuille is half-Quebecois, half-Palestinian. I've taken his political allegiance away from Poland and given it to Palestine for a couple of reasons, but suffice it to say that I do what I want. 
> 
> But yeah, I can't write non-ginger Feuilly.
> 
> "Bread and Roses" is a slogan used by labor protests, and a song as well, which has been done (and done best, in my opinion) by Judy Collins. You should go listen to it. The idea is that it's not enough to not be oppressed anymore, but that as human beings, we deserve respect, we deserve dignity, we deserve the right to live a life filled with beauty and love. "If I can't dance, it's not my revolution," to badly misquote Emma Goldman. Revolutions should be about more than the militant demands to crush what has been holding us down (although, let me tell you, I am all about those, fuck the man and the machine), but also about finding space both within the physical revolution and within the zeitgeist of revolution for celebrations of friendship, and beauty, and love, and of remembering those who came before, and those who will follow. Remember that you're human, basically, and that the sheer overwhelming love you can hold for other human beings should inspire you to help them build a path up. 
> 
> I think I've about used up my time and space to wax lyrical about leftist hymns, but the chapter title is from Which Side Are You On?, originally by Florence Reece, but with excellent versions done at different times over the 20th and 21st centuries by, among others, Ani DiFranco, Pete Seeger, and Natalie Merchant
> 
> Also, I'm at pastoraleglantine.tumblr.com. Meet me there for more revolution.


End file.
